


Study Habits and the Multi-Layered Worlds Reduction Technique

by ERNest



Category: Umineko no Naku Koro ni | When the Seagulls Cry
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Reality, Gen, Reminiscing, might have beens
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-01
Updated: 2021-02-01
Packaged: 2021-03-12 19:27:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 414
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29140761
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ERNest/pseuds/ERNest
Summary: The worlds in Kinzo’s bottle crowd together like the ghosts of dying daydreams. So he drinks.
Kudos: 8





	Study Habits and the Multi-Layered Worlds Reduction Technique

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this in the middle of Episode One, and it's amazing how many details I picked up on (or guessed) without realizing it!

There are worlds contained in Kinzo’s bottle. In some of those worlds he is already dead but there are others where Beatrice never left, and a very small few where she didn’t appear at all when he first summoned her and the Ushiromiya family was left to falter into obscurity, as, perhaps, it should have from the beginning. He’ll never know which life he’ll have remembered in an instant until he takes a swallow, so Kinzo drinks. And he drinks.

If it was bad he wants a do-over. If it was good he wants to chase that high. If he falls deep enough into the fantasy, then some other Kinzo enters a study just like this and drinks, so he gains the effects without ever depleting the poisonous green liquid in his hand. If, however, he spends a long enough eternity waiting for something that’s never going to happen, he’ll fall victim to the sunk cost fallacy, worse than any Devil’s Proof. He chooses instead to drown his dividends, pouring the sweetfish river of absinthe and memories down his throat.

Nanjo-san says his reliance on the bottle is slowly killing him, but Beatrice has promised that his faith in the bottle is what’s kept him alive even this long. It wasn’t the real Beatrice, of course, only the phantom of her mockingly beautiful smile drifting across his vision, but he knows it to be the truth. Nanjo-san also says he has three months to live, just as he’s been saying for a year and a half, but what no one seems to understand is that it’s the same three months and always has been.

Kinzo drinks: there are 18 people on this island.

Kinzo drinks: there are 19 people on this island, and the last is Beatrice.

Kinzo drinks: there are 17 people on this island because his youngest daughter made better choices with men and didn’t end up saddled with a kid.

Kinzo drinks: there are 16 people on this island because his youngest daughter made worse choices with men and didn’t survive those choices.

Kinzo drinks: there are 19 people on this island, and the last is the owner of the souped-up boat that brought all the rest here.

Kinzo drinks: no one has ever set foot on this island.

Kinzo drinks: there is always one more person on this island than the last number Battler suggested.

Kinzo drinks: every person _is_ an island.

Kinzo drinks: so they learn to build bridges.


End file.
